Stu Blog: Someone on the right attacks Glenn Beck! Panic!

by Stu

Monday, Feb 28, 2011 at 11:19 AM EDT

MSNBC is able to fill its programming schedule for another day because a supposed conservative said something negative about Glenn Beck. This time, it’s someone named Peter Wehner. (Quick note: when you’re linking to Media Matters, you’re not conservative.) His column is the same yawn-inducing nonsense spouted by a couple of people at The Weekly Standard and several liberal authors that Wehner and others apparently believe are obscure enough to rip off. The fact that they are correct about that obscurity doesn’t make it any better. We’ve spent endless time in Fusion Magazine and on TV and radio showing how disingenuous their arguments are, so I will not rehash them again here.

But, the complaint from Wehner is particularly amusing for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s not news. This same guy, wrote roughly the same story about Glenn in September 2009. In 2011, he’s saying Glenn is “dangerous” to conservatism. In 2009, he was saying Glenn was “harmful” to conservatism. In 2011, Glenn is about to “blow apart professionally.” In 2009, Glenn would “soon flame out.”

But Wehner’s lack of creativity gives us the rare opportunity to measure the value of his rhetoric. He wrote his last story about how bad Glenn Beck was for Republicans about 17 months ago. If I may paraphrase another figure on the right that the establishment theorized was dangerous–

Hey GOP–are you better off today, than you were 17 months ago?

Are you better off today, than you were 63 House seats ago?

Are you better off today, than you were 6 Senate seats ago?

Glenn isn’t a registered Republican. He doesn’t define success by how many seats Republicans hold. But, for those who do–how can you argue that Glenn’s rise in visibility over the past couple of years has been bad for you? I guess it’s the same people who were angry about Rush Limbaugh’s hand in ushering in the first Republican controlled Congress in approximately three trillion years.

And, a quick question to any media member who might actually be trying to understand this minor phenomenon, and not just write another attack piece: Who was criticizing who first? Is it really a story of Glenn getting super-ultra-crazy all of the sudden? Or is it a story of a bunch of beltway Republicans, many of which have been unsuccessfully requesting meetings with Glenn for years, finally getting frustrated with his refusal to play ball and toe the party line?